Category: People

I have written elsewhere, some time ago, about the number of persons who influenced my thought and also the way I think about issues. Those whom I didn’t not know personally but whose books influenced me form one set of such persons. These range from poets to philosophers, journalists, men like Boris Pasternak and other…

Where too many theories don’t work! Amartya Sen was in India recently and he was at his usual best: brilliant, insightful and oh, too many stimulating words and suggestions. So too another Nobel Prize economist, the American Joseph Stiglitz too was in India and he too was so brilliant and made very many insightful points….

Javed Akhtar on society’s values! Society’s education perceptions and priorities After going through the BJP education minister days it seems a springtime under Mr.Arjun Singh, the new HRD minister. But poor Mr.Singh! Can he deliver on the promises of the government? We mean the education for all and the midday meals targets? We are not…

How to understand our times? Are we not living under the American empire? are not our intellectual beliefs, our uppie culture, consumerism make us already mental slaves of American power There are manychallenges for India. As the largest democracy it had survived the post-Independence period. India’s many capabilities make us a serious contender for a…

Excerpts from an autobiography Gopal Krishna Gokhale was a remark able Indian in his time.He was considered the greatest living Indian,said Annie Besant in a letter to Gokhale. Lord Curzon,the headstrong imperialist Viceroy wrote to his boss,the secretary of state that Gokhale was the most able and also the most morally upright Indian member of…

Only a rudimentary Indian education. He had certainly no Western education. Thus, his education thought and philosophy as such was very orthodox, thought it was cast in the pre-colonial mental makeup. Take the life of Dr. S. Radhakrishnan.I gave a second reading of his biography his son and distinguished history writer Savapalli Gopal this time…

My Oxford years : crowded by philosophers and historians! A.J.P.Taylor, Isiah Berlin, James Joll Indians need to learn to distrust much of British written history. The immediate provocation for this essay is the reading of A.J.P. Taylor (1906-1990), the well-known British historian, for the second time. I had the good fortune to attend his history…

50 Vice Chancellors meet:what they will achieve? V.S.Naipaul, the Nobel Prize winning author of Indian origin is known for his provocative remarks. He is a maverick. In a recent interview to New York Times he said: there are no thinkers in India! A country of one billion people, he says, has no thinkers! It is…